How Can Anyone Who Loves Music Enjoy Musicals

You have set your mind that I am a troll and nothing I say can change that. I do not seem to be able to have an opinion on here but back to the subject, I agree with the report. You say you couldn't care less about my opinion so stop replying to my posts

Overall the piece itself is perfectly respectable as it explains why he doesn't like musicals and opera (and many people don't). It's the headline that's objectionable because it is completely unpersuasive and insulting to those who disagree with him (and many people do).

The very idea of having people acting and then singing at the same time, and quite possibly dancing too, repels us.

People acting and singing at the same time--dancing, as well--has it roots in the most ancient of storytelling. It is as human as laughing or crying.

The way he employs the irritating British habit of speaking in the first person plural makes the rest of his column unreadable...to those of us who are intelligent appreciators of good writing and performing.

When British people speak in the "Royal We," Americans think they're pompous blowhards. When Americans fall into it, they just seem pretentious.

Thank you, Joey. I too would find Mr. Sexton's argument more compelling if he seemed even vaguely aware that the "non-musical" is a mere blip on the timeline of theater history.

Or if he acknowledged that only European cultures split up music, dance and drama and sent them to separate buildings.

Or even if he noted that all art is based on conventions, even Naturalism. (No, Mr. Sexton, people in real life don't live their lives always facing the same wall or movie camera. You're just used to that convention.)

Or that Verdi and Puccini wrote the popular musicals of their eras.

Or that more contemporary opera composers (Bernstein, Weill) also wrote for the popular stage and yearned for Broadway hits.

"People who love musicals — and we have to confront the gruesome fact that there are such people, 60 million of them having paid to see Les Misérables on stage around the world — don’t care so much. They just want to be pumped up with emotion by any means, lacking perhaps any interior life of their own."

Pfft, those plebes and their wanting music to inspire "emotion" in them. That's not what music is for!

Jimmy, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? It's almost 9 PM!

Hermajesty, I'd like to point out that Jordan and I disagree on this board (i.e. I think Daphne Rubin-Vega has not aged well.). Yet, I have never been called a troll. So, your argument that he calls you a troll just because you disagree is not valid.

Ladies and gentlemen, name-calling takes a lot of time and bandwidth that could be better used for calling third parties names, such as the critic who wrote the article under discussion. [JUST KIDDING AROUND.] For the record, I don't think "gay" should have pejorative connotations, but, unfortunately, some people use it that way. As far as calling someone a "troll," I'm not sure that anyone who seriously wants to discuss theater is really a troll, even if they try to rile people up. I tend to think of "trolls" as people who hang around boards to which they have no connection or interest for the sole purpose of insulting or annoying people --for example, calling people "libtards" on a left-oriented site or hurling anti-Semitic epithets on a Jewish board. Just my two cents.